by Michael Kun
Clifford was unpacking his boxes in the office when Christine Datto appeared in his doorway one evening. It was 6:15. Although she was supposed to leave work at 5:00, Christine did not watch the clock like many of the other secretaries did, and she often had to be told when her workday was over. Her purse was slung over her shoulder, and she leaned her head into the office, the rest of her body remaining in the hallway, like a swimmer dipping a toe into the pool to test the temperature.
“Mr. Cooley?” she said.
“Mr. Cooley is my father,” Clifford said. “I’m just Clifford.” He had made the same statement so many times he could not count them, always expecting a laugh in response, but rarely getting one. He hadn’t altered his comment to reflect his father’s death. He was still saying, “Mr. Cooley is my father,” rather than “Mr. Cooley was my father.” With his father’s death, Clifford knew that he, in fact, was Mr. Cooley now.
“Clifford,” Christine said, “I hate to bother you, but I was hoping I could have a minute of your time.”
“Of course, Christine,” he said. He gestured for her to sit in one of his father’s (now his) red leather chairs—Who on earth buys red leather chairs? Who but a man with a monkey clock?—and he made a point of looking her in the eyes as she sat, and again as she crossed her legs.
“Mr. Cooley,” she said, then quickly corrected herself. “I’m sorry, I mean, Clifford. Clifford, I don’t know how to do this.”
For a moment, he thought she was about to ask him for a date. She had always smiled at him when he said good morning, and they had once had a nice conversation about movies at the firm luncheon where she had patted his hand with her fingertips. Surely, she had heard about his divorce. When he noticed that the tip of her nose was red, he knew that she had come to speak about something else. Had she been crying?
“Clifford,” she continued, “I’m here to give you my two weeks’ notice.”
“What? Are you kidding? You’re leaving?” He was surprised how loudly he was speaking.
“Yes.” She sniffed and rubbed the tip of her nose where it was red. “I’ve accepted a job with another law firm.” When she told him the name of the other law firm, he was not surprised. It was the city’s largest firm, a firm that, many years earlier, had declined to offer him a job when he had graduated from law school. Few people knew that he would have preferred working for that firm, that he had ended up at his father’s firm because he had no choice.
“Are they paying you more money?”
“It’s not about the money, Clifford.”
“But they’re paying you more money, aren’t they?” He sounded jealous and he knew it. He leaned back in his chair to suggest he was not bothered. The chair creaked.
“Boy,” he said, “this chair could use some oil.” He pretended to inspect it by leaning over one of the arms, but he had no idea where to look.
“Yes,” she said, “your father used to say the same thing. There’s some oil in the top drawer.”
Clifford opened the top drawer and, sure enough, there was a small blue bottle of WD-40 beneath a notepad. He took the bottle out and set it on the desk beside the wooden box where his father’s cigars were stored. “I’ll fix it later,” he said. “Where were we? Yes, that’s right. They’re paying you more money, aren’t they?”
“Well, yes.” She seemed embarrassed, and he did not enjoy embarrassing her.
“Can you tell me how much more?”
“Please, Clifford, talking about money isn’t something I like doing. It’s crass, don’t you think?”
“Just tell me how much more, that’s all. I don’t enjoy talking about money either, but sometimes it’s a necessity. If you go to the grocery store and they ring up all the items you’re buying, you have to talk about money or else you won’t know how much to pay them.”
Christine seemed to think for several seconds before saying, “Can I write it down? The number?”
“Of course,” he said, and he pushed a yellow legal pad and a pen toward her across his father’s (now his) desk. She wrote swiftly on the top sheet, then peeled it off the pad and folded the sheet twice before passing it to him. Clifford prepared to read an outrageous sum on the sheet of paper, but it was not outrageous at all. Instead, all the note said was, “Two thousand dollars more.”
“Two thousand dollars more?” he said. “Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t know how much we’re paying you, but I can match that. I can give you a two-thousand-dollar raise. I can put the paperwork through tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “That wouldn’t be right, Clifford,” she said. “It wouldn’t be right for me to get a raise when the other secretaries have been here longer than me.”
“It would be our secret.”
“I don’t like secrets, Clifford. I’ve had enough of secrets.”
Before he could stop himself, Clifford said, “What do you mean that you’ve had enough of secrets?”
“I know what people say. I hear them. I figure boys will be boys, but I hear what they say about me.”
Clifford fixed a look on his face to suggest he didn’t know what she was talking about, but he knew.
“I know they make comments about me, about my body. I’ve heard them talking about what they’d like to do to me.” She stopped herself. “Don’t worry, Clifford, I’m not going to run off and file a lawsuit. I’m not like that. I wouldn’t do that to your father, and I wouldn’t do that to you.”
He looked at her solemnly. “Then what do you want, Christine? Please tell me.”
“I don’t want anything. I just wanted to come in, give you my notice, tell you that it has been an honor to work here, and wish you the best of luck. I know it’s been a difficult time for you. And you don’t have to worry. I’m not going to call in sick or not show up for work the next two weeks. I’m going to work hard for you until my last second here. You can count on me.”
“I know I can, Christine.”
At that moment, as she began to rise, Clifford envisioned the law firm without Christine, a firm that, in fact, would be A.D. It was easier to imagine the firm without his father.
“Two thousand dollars, right?” he said.
“What?”
“Two thousand dollars is the difference in pay, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the reason you won’t stay if I match the offer is that you don’t want to get a raise because the other secretaries have been here longer, right?”
“It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fine. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to give you and every other secretary a two-thousand-dollar raise. If I do that, will you stay?”
Christine’s eyes grew large, and the smile that spread across her face was one that few men could not find appealing. “Are you kidding me?”
“Not at all.”
“You’d really do that?”
“Yes.”
“Can the firm afford that?”
“Let me worry about that. Will you stay?”
“Of course,” she said. She put a hand over her heart. “Oh my God, of course.”
He wanted to hug her. He sensed that she wanted to hug him. Instead, he extended a hand across the desk and shook her tiny hand firmly, holding it a moment or two longer than he would normally.
“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” she said. “Bright and early.”
“Yes,” he said, satisfied that he had handled the situation better than his father would have. “Bright and early.”
“You are a good man, Clifford,” she said. “Your father would be very proud of you.”
“It’s just money,” he said. “Nothing more than money.”
He made a point not to watch her as she left the room, then sat in his father’s (now his) desk chair and looked at the harbor, dark and boatless. He opened the bottle of oil and knelt to oil the desk chair, pushing and pulling the seat until he was satisfied the creaking had disappeared. He flipped open the humi
dor on the desk. The smell that escaped reminded him of his father but did not make him wistful. He removed one of the cigars and snipped off the end. As he did, he noticed a small piece of yellow paper beneath the remaining cigars. One by one, he removed the cigars, stacking them on the desk. As he did, he saw that there were other slips of paper hidden beneath the row of cigars, each folded several times like a love note. He unfolded them one by one.
“One thousand dollars more,” read the first.
Then, “Five hundred dollars more.”
Then, “Two thousand dollars more.”
“One thousand dollars more.”
“Five thousand dollars more.”
He had not seen a sly smile lurking behind her sad face. He had not caught her calculating the houses and cars and television sets. If she ever sued the law firm, she would win millions. If she ever sued the law firm, there would be no more law firm.
He put the notes back in the humidor, adding the new note to the pile before returning all of the cigars. Then, he took the monkey clock out of the box he had packed it in and returned it to the desk, where it belonged.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
There.
Now that was a short story.
That’s what you paid twenty dollars for.
That’s what we paid a $500,000 advance for.
It’s stories like “Cigar Box” that have earned Michael the title of “The Voice of His Generation.”
It’s stories like “Cigar Box” that have earned Michael the coveted Ernest Hemingway Prize two years in a row.
With fingers crossed, here’s hoping that “Cigar Box” will make it three years in a row!
THE BLUE ENGINES
Do you love music?
Do you love music and hate Mr. Bloogins, our phys ed teacher?
If so, you should join Ramapo High School’s newest music supergroup, The Blue Engines.
The Blue Engines are going to ROCK!
Do you remember how much Accelerator rocked before they all graduated?
Well, The Blue Engines are going to rock twice as much. Maybe even three times as much.
Why are we going to rock?
Because, unlike Accelerator, who wrote songs about cars even though they didn’t even have their driver’s licenses (and even though they drove their moms’ station wagons when they finally got their licenses), we’re going to write songs about something we actually know about. We’re going to write songs about something we feel passionately about. We’re going to write songs about how much we hate Mr. Bloogins, the world’s worst phys ed teacher and an all-around disgusting, terrible excuse for a human being.
How terrible is Mr. Bloogins?
So terrible that someone went through all the sophomore world history books with a Magic Marker™, crossed out all of the “Adolf Hitlers,” and replaced them with “Stanley Blooginses.” We’re not going to narc on the person who did that, because what he did is the coolest thing anyone has ever done in the history of Ramapo High School, which is the lamest school on the planet. But, we are going to have a song called “Stanley Bloogins Equals Adolf Hitler.” And it’s going to ROCK! It’s going to rock like Led Zeppelin, only more.
You have to admit that Led Zeppelin rocks.
Now imagine a band that rocks EVEN MORE.
Now imagine that you’re a member of that band.
What does that mean?
It means that you personally rock, right?
Think of it like a math problem. If there is a set called “A” that rocks, and if you are part of a subset “B” that is within set “A,” then you also rock. Mathematically speaking.
So, who is in our supergroup so far?
So far, it’s me and Todd Trava.
I’m the lead singer and lead guitarist because I used to be in the choir and because I’m taking guitar lessons from Mr. Haskell on Wednesday afternoons. Mr. Haskell ROCKS. Todd used to be the flute player in the After School Players, who played at last year’s Spring Fling. They didn’t rock, but that was only because their faculty advisor wouldn’t let them rock. He was on a complete power trip. Which is why Todd quit the Players. Also, their practices were at the same time as the math club meetings, and if you miss more than two math club meetings, they throw you out of the club forever and you can’t list it on your college applications unless you want to be a little loosey-goosey with the facts. That’s dangerous. Last year, there was a guy from Indian Hills who didn’t get into Princeton because he said he was in the science club when he really wasn’t. So, only those of us who are actually in the math club can put that on our college applications.
Mr. Bloogins likes to call us the “math club queers” in front of the entire phys ed class.
“Let’s see the math club queers try to climb the ropes,” he’ll say, and everyone will laugh. Or, “Let’s split into two squads for a game of team handball. It’ll be the normal kids versus the math club queers.”
Let’s see who’s laughing when The Blue Engines play their awesome hit song “My Name Is Stanley Bloogins and I’m a Turd.” It won’t be Mr. Bloogins.
Let’s see who’s laughing when he sees the cover of our first album, which is going to be a picture of Mr. Bloogins wearing a bra and panties. We made the picture using Photoshop on the computer. It looks like a real photograph, not like we just pasted Mr. Bloogins’s head on a lady’s body. Above the picture, it’s going to say “THE BLUE ENGINES” in all capital letters. Below is going to be the title of the album: If You Hate Mr. Bloogins, Clap Your Hands. That’s also going to be the name of one of our most awesome songs. Then, whenever kids in school clap their hands, it will be a signal that they hate Mr. Bloogins. When the football team makes a touchdown, no one will be able to tell if people are clapping because they’re happy about the touchdown or because they hate Mr. Bloogins. I think it’ll mostly be because they hate Mr. Bloogins because no one really cares about the football team. The guys on the football team are jerks who do not rock, even though they think they do.
To complete our awesome supergroup, we need:
a drummer
a bass player
a rhythm guitarist
someone with a station wagon to help us move our equipment around
amplifiers
microphones
two or three roadies to help us move our equipment around
You do not need any musical experience to apply. Mr. Haskell is willing to teach anyone how to play an instrument. He only charges $20 per hour, and he completely ROCKS. He doesn’t make fun of people in the math club or the marching band or even people in the drama club, who everyone makes fun of. He totally understands that giving someone a C or a D in phys ed can completely______ ruin his grade point average and keep him from going to his first-choice college. He completely understands that Mr. Bloogins is evil.
So, if you want to totally ROCK, apply for The Blue Engines today.
How do you apply?
Just call me at home. If my mom answers the phone, make sure you specify that you want to talk with Stanley Bloogins Jr. If you don’t say “Jr.,” it’s 50-50 whether she’ll put me or my dad on the phone. If my dad answers, just clap into the phone until he hangs up. Don’t worry, he’s too cheap to pay for Caller ID, so he won’t know it’s you. Just clap.
He won’t know what it means.
At least not now.
But someday, he will.
Oh, yes, someday he will.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Hmm.
What did you think of that one? We’re kind of on the fence about it ourselves.
Even though it won the Earl of Prussia Award for Short Stories!
Awarded by the Earl of Prussia himself!
A PLACE LIKE HERE, ONLY DIFFERENT
Mrs. Hannah’s at my kitchen table, her lips pursed as she blows into her coffee to cool it. She’s a sweet old lady, Mrs. Hannah, seventy-something. She wears gym socks and running shoes most of the time, and she plants vegetables every spring i
n a patch beside her garage. Tomatoes and cucumbers mostly, which she brings over in shopping bags. “Here, Calvin, dear,” she’ll say, “little present for you,” and she’ll leave them on the counter beside the toaster.
I’m still at the stove, filling my own cup with coffee.
“I really should have called the police,” she says. Her crinkled, round face betrays her temper. “You can only take so much, and then you have to call the police and let them take care of it.”
Very properly, she lifts her cup to her mouth and sips from it, what couldn’t be more than a drop or two.
“That’s hot,” she grimaces, “very hot,” and she fans her hand in front of her open mouth, returning the cup to the saucer. “That almost knocked my socks off, it’s so hot.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, not impolitely, “but that’s the only way to make it. If you don’t make it steaming hot, it doesn’t taste right.” Which is true. Ellie used to make iced coffee in the summers, and we’d take it with us on drives, but even then you have to make it hot first. You add ice cubes and wait for it to get cold. It can take half the day.
Ellie’s thirty-three years old. She’s my wife.
I lean against the kitchen counter, my arms crossed loosely in front of me, and I listen absently to Mrs. Hannah now. I can tell she’s just been to the beauty parlor this morning. She smells like it. Her hair, the color of soot, is stiff and tall, the same hairdo she’s worn for as long as we’ve lived here.
It’s only then that I notice how rigidly she sits, her posture perfect, and not just for a woman that age. In one of our high-back kitchen chairs, the ones that used to belong to Ellie’s parents before they bought new ones themselves, Mrs. Hannah looks like a girl in Sunday school. If it weren’t for the skin about her face and wrists, and her hairdo—if it weren’t for being old—she wouldn’t look old at all.
